MennoLink Books and Music

Through a close examinations of a variety of documents-diaries, letters to immigrant newspapers, and tax rolls-historian Royden Loewen shows that the 1870's Mennonite immigrants were in fact creative and innovative. In the "hidden worlds" of their private lives, they were able to maintain some of the most important aspects of their Mennonite identity-such as pacifism, and community-run institutions-while also adapting their old social structures to a new environment. Loewen argues that, in fact, private social practices, hidden from public view, were the undergirdings of these immigrants' successful integration into North American society.